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Arizona to ditch drug cocktail used in 2-hour execution

By Danielle Haynes

PHOENIX, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Arizona will no longer be using a two-drug cocktail it used in the execution of Joseph Wood, who died after two hours and 15 doses of the drug.

A review of state's lethal injection protocol found Wood's execution was "handled appropriately," yet determined a two-drug combination of midazolam and hydromorphone would no longer be used.

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The state began using the combination drug after the European Union voted in 2011 to prohibit the sale of pentobarbital, which was previously used in lethal injections in the United States.

Wood's attorney, Dale Baich, blamed the use of midazolam and hydromorphone for the extended amount of time it took his client to die. The combination drug had only been used one other time in the United States, in Ohio.

"The experiment using midazolam combined with hydromorphone to carry out an execution failed today in Arizona," Baich said at the time of Wood's death.

"This independent review concluded that at all times following the administration of the execution protocol the inmate was fully sedated, was totally unresponsive to stimuli, and as a result did not suffer," Corrections Director Charles Ryan said Monday of Wood's execution. "In fact, the Pima County medical examiner is cited as reporting that the breathing pattern exhibited by the inmate prior to his death is a normal bodily response to dying, even in someone highly sedated."

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The Arizona Department of Corrections will now use a three-drug cocktail, which also includes midazolam. The paralytic vecuronium bromide and the heart-stopper potassium chloride are also part of the new combination drug.

Wood was given the death penalty for the 1989 seats of his estranged girlfriend and her father.

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